Cinematic Lightroom Landscape Preset

Lately, I’ve seen really lots of cinematic effects on Instagram. There are mostly cold tones with a rare spark of warm look. And so I have decided to have a look, do some magic and produce a free Lightroom landscape preset for you. I know, there are lots of Lightroom presets for travel photography, but in reality, I couldn’t find anything usable and also with an explanation. So, read further to learn how to create cinematic photography yourself (DIY) or download the preset right away.

Lightroom Landscape Preset Tutorial

Honestly speaking, color management has always been a hard topic for me. I do not have an inner feeling of the colour harmony. I do have that knowledge about the composition, but just not the colours. That is why I have spent plenty of time and effort on various videos and master classes on that matter. I will show you the changes I did step by step and explain why and in the end you will have a preset to download. Typically, I use Adobe Camera Raw in Photoshop, and therefore the screenshots are from this application. The controls in Lightroom are precisely the same (except for the Dehaze filter). The presets are not the same and therefore I’m going to provide two presets – one Lightroom landscape preset and the other one for ACR (Photoshop).

By the way, have a look at the Online Photoshop Classes the I provide.

Initial Seascape Photo And Color Scheme

I have created this photo at the Cape Solander, Kamay National Park, NSW, Australia. The time is well before sunrise so that there is not much light and relatively long exposure time. The most popular colour scheme these days is either blue or blue-green. To me, they look very depressing (however, moody). For this scene, I wanted something more positive and had decided to emphasize the existing colours and play around them to create a new cinematic colour scheme. The sandstone is naturally orange, and the sky is blue-ish. So, the final colour combination is around this complementary orange-blue pair. The muted cinematic versions of the colours would be something like Teal Blue and Burning Sand colours. I figured the colour names using this great little tool: Name That Color.

Basic Settings

Basic settings are essential. They provide the general look and feel of the photo, the exposure, the highlights and the shadows. My settings are as follows:

Let me explain. I’m pretty happy with the default White balance produced by the camera in this case.

1. White Balance. For sunrise shots, Auto white balance doesn’t always do a good job.
2. Exposure. The photo is slightly underexposed (to save the details in the sky), so I have increased the Exposure a bit.
3. Contrast. For nearly every photo you need to increase contrast. Around +50 is an average for the low contrast conditions like I had before sunrise.
4. Highlights. It is a general approach to shift the slider to the left to recover some details in highlights.
5. Shadows. The same applies to the shadows – we need to recover details. Plus, for cinematic effect, we need to push this slider even more, sometimes even to the max.
6. Whites. A little shift to the right will give us some brilliance and overall more positive look.
7. Blacks. Usually, for landscape, I would shift it to the left and increase contrast, but for cinematic, we don’t need a lot of contrast, so with this change, I’m removing the black in the shadows making it grey.
8. Clarity. I have a lot of rocks in this photo, and high clarity would produce too many distracting details.
9. Vibrance. We need a better colour separation, hence this rise.
10. Saturation. Saturation is “heavier” than Vibrance, so to produce a muted palette we need to remove a bit of colour.

The result:

Curve Settings

The curve is one of the most critical tools Adobe has to offer. The cinematic effect editing is not an exclusion to this rule. We need something unique here to achieve a low contrast look while preserving the contrast in the mid tones.

How To Edit For The Cinematic Photography

1. Open Tone Curve tab
2. Open Point sub-tab
3. Create a normal S-curve
4. Raise the lower bottom end to remove the black shadows completely
5. Lowed the upper right end to make the highlights grey

The S-shape in the middle of the curve increases contrasts in the mid-tones, while the manipulations with the curve endings lower the contrast for the shadows and the highlights. This outlook is the well-known cinematic effect like we see in many movies.

The result of this change:

We are getting closer to the desired look of the photo, but there are more steps to go. Read further for the actual colour management.

RAW Pre-Sharpening

Although sharpening is not related to our editing topic, I have decided to include it in the article and preset anyway. 

Famous photographers have different opinions on whether or not we should be doing pre-sharpening in RAW or do it as a last step after we finished all other edits. I prefer the first option – to sharpen in raw. Without going deeply into the theory, I tend to agree with Mark Metternich and his way to sharpen images. 

How To Sharpen Raw Images

1. Set Radius to the minimum (0.5)
2. Set Details to the maximum (100)
3. Zoom in (100%)
4. Increase Amount gradually until it’s too much
5. Go back by 5-10 points 

The amount will differ for each camera or lens. For my Nikon D750 and Tamron 15-30, I need around +60.

HSL Color Management For Cinematic Photography

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Hue

The Hue sliders part is the hardest one for me. This is where we manipulate the colours to achieve the colours we need. Here is what I have got:

1. Reds. The orange in the original photo was too reddish, and so I shifted it towards the orange hue.
2. To make the orange less yellow I have shifted it a tad towards the reds – it stayed orange, just with less yellow tint.
3. Yellows. For the same reason (to have less yellow in the orange) I shifted it toward greens. Although the change in yellows didn’t do much in this photo.
4. Greens. I prefer to shift greens to the right when I have anything green. It makes the colour look emerald. In this photo, the change had affected the forest on top of the cliff and colours in the water.
5. Aquas and Blues. To make the water more cyan and less blue, I did these changes.
6. Purples and Magentas. The image has no such colours, hence no change.

Saturation

The idea is similar – emphasize Oranges and Aquas, mute all others. Simple.

Luminance

Keeping it simple! Make our main colours stronger and brighter, hence taking one extra step towards the final look.

Every photo is individual and may require some specific adjustments, but the changes I did concentrate on the Oranges and the Aquas because they are the primary colours in my scheme.

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Split Toning

You have probably figured out – cinematic photography is mainly about the colour. That is why we will need to use Split Toning. Split Toning allows us to tone highlights or shadows separately. 

The first two sliders are for the highlights. In the normal conditions, we need to tone just a little bit, no more than 10-12 of the Saturation. But for the starters, we may shift the saturation to the right, then pick appropriate Hue and then move Saturation back. Also, holding Alt while changing the Hue will show the selected tone on the photo. I have chosen some orange colour (hue 35) and some cyan colour (hue 204) for the toning. The numbers may differ for each image.

The shadows in the current version are no longer orange; they have a cyan tint improving the colour contrast. Keep reading, we are nearly done with our Lightroom landscape preset.

Camera Calibration

The last but not least step is the camera calibration. This step is also related to the colour correction. In fact, it is the most core colour correction available as it works on the level of the three channels of the whole image (red, green, blue). It allows changing the tone or the saturation of each channel.

My changes mean that I made reds a little more orange and I made blues a bit more cyan and a little more saturated as a final touch.

Final Touches

For this particular photograph, I did one more step, which is not included in the preset. I made the sky a little warmer and a tad brighter on the top left. It is not in the files because every photo will have its composition and may not have Sun in it at all. 

For this edit, I have selected two Radial Filters.

The first filter increases colour temperature (makes it more orange) and decreases Clarity (as it usually happens when the light is beaming into the camera). The second filter just makes the sky a little brighter.

The outer filter is the warm one; the smaller is the bright one. A little trick making the image alive.

The Final Cinematic Effect Photo

I have covered all aspects and settings of my Lightroom Landscape Preset for cinematic photos. And you should be able to adjust and modify it for your needs.

Free Lightroom Preset For Nature Photography

Initially, my idea was to create a tutorial with some detailed guidance for you to follow. But then I have decided to include this free nature  Lightroom preset as well. Hopefully, you will find it useful and with all the explanations you will easily modify it for your unique pictures.

The archive includes two files, one for Lightroom and one for ACR (Photoshop). Internally, they are both similar.

How To Import Lightroom Classic Preset

1. Open Lightroom Classic
2. Click Develop on the top right
3. Expand Presets on the left-hand side of the screen
4. Right-click on the User Presets label
5. Finally, click Import and select *.lrtemplate file to load

How To Import Photoshop ACR Preset

1. Run Photoshop
2. Open any raw file
3. Click on the little button on the top right of the sliders panel
4. Click Load Settings
5. Select *.xmp file to load

Conclusion

You can also use the Lightroom preset for travel photography, nature photography and any kind of landscape photography. The Adobe Camera Raw preset is just the same and is included for your convenience – some people use ACR and never use Lightroom (like myself).

If you made it to the end, I guess it’s safe to assume you are interested in editing landscapes. I’ve got something special for you! Check this book out!